Congress never gets a budget done on time these days. In fact, the
legislature is on a 20-year
streak
of passing continuing resolutions to give themselves more time. Eventually they
do tend to figure it out, but not
this year.
After the House of Representatives passed (yet another) continuing resolution
that the Senate refused to approve, the government shut down at 12:01 a.m. EST
this morning. It's been 5 years since that last happened.

Certainly, a fair bit of effort went into trying to avoid this outcome.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) spent
hours
at the White House trying to hammer out a compromise with Donald Trump, and then
spent more hours back in the Senate trying to do with same with Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell (R-KY). It was all for naught, as the Senate never came
particularly close to getting something done before adjourning late in the
evening. When the senators
voted
on the House's bill, having failed to come up with an alternative of their own,
the GOP was able to peel off five red-state Democrats: Joe Donnelly (IN), Heidi
Heitkamp (ND), Doug Jones (AL), Joe Manchin (WV), and Claire McCaskill (MO).
That's not enough, even if they hadn't lost the votes of Jeff Flake (R-AZ),
Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Mike Lee (R-UT), Rand Paul (R-KY), and...Mitch McConnell.
The Majority Leader's "nay" vote was
reportedly for procedural reasons, since a senator who votes in that way is allowed
to ask that a bill be brought up for consideration again. In other words, he may
try to jam this through a second time. If so, he needs to flip all the GOP naysayers,
plus another four Democrats.

At the moment, the shutdown is primarily symbolic, since most government offices
are closed for the weekend, and the ones that aren't generally don't shut down even
when there's no budget. The primary consequence thus far, although it's admittedly
a pretty dire one, is that Trump had to
cancel
his weekend golf trip to Mar-a-Lago. Never let it be said that the folks in Washington
don't feel the consequences of their shenanigans.

The members of Congress also canceled their travel plans, so they could keep
working on the problem through the weekend. White House Budget Director Mick
"The Knife" Mulvaney, among others, is
confident
that everything will be straightened out in time for the open on business on
Monday, telling CNN that, "I think you're going to see a deal." He may be right,
but the members still face the same basic problem: They can't get on the same
page. In particular, the House Freedom Caucus and Senate Democrats have
diametrically opposed views on DACA, and both have numbers enough to make it
difficult (the HFC) or nearly impossible (Senate Democrats) for leadership to
ignore them. Something's going to have to give, and we've got
about 36 hours left for that to happen after three months of it not
happening. Failing that, a lot of people are going to have unpaid holidays on Monday.

Clearly recognizing the distinct possibility that a deal does not get done,
both sides are spinning furiously in order to pin the
blame on the other side. The Democrats have the easier case to make, since the
GOP controls the levers of power. Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT), for example, declared
that, "It's hard for anybody with a straight face to say, 'Republicans control
the presidency, the House and the Senate. I hope Democrats don't close us down.'"
Further, Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) are claiming that
they had a
deal
with the President, and that he walked away from it after talking to some of his
conservative advisors. The Democrats have also taken to
calling it
the "Trump Shutdown." This is a response to the White House, which has been
calling it
the "Schumer Shutdown" for the last 48 hours. Fox News pundit Sean Hannity, who
can always be counted on to tote the red team's water,
argued
that the Democrats are willing to put undocumented immigrants ahead of American
citizens. Expect to hear that talking point a whole lot more if the government
is still closed on Monday.

Who is going to win the battle of spin? Well, historically, the party in control
of Congress during a shutdown takes the blame. The data we have at hand suggests that the pattern will
hold this time. A WaPo/ABC News
poll
says that 48% of voters are pointing the finger at Trump and the GOP, while 28% think it's
the Democrats' fault. Quinnipiac
has
it at 53%/34%, while CNN's
numbers
are 47%/31%. Significantly, the polls also reveal that independent voters blame
the Republicans by a 2-to-1 margin, while Democratic voters think that holding
the line on DACA is well worth risking a government shutdown. The icing on the
cake, such as it is,
comes
from Twitter, where the top-trending tag worldwide on Friday night was
#TrumpShutdown. Undoubtedly, party leaders on both sides are aware of these
numbers, which means that a deal to protect the dreamers is very likely before
the weekend is out. (Z)

Yesterday, the Supreme Court
agreed
to review the legality of Donald Trump's most recent ban on people from six majority-Muslim countries entering the U.S.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the ban violated U.S. law. The administration appealed to the high Court,
which will take up the case in April and will rule by June.

The ban has been extremely controversial since Trump has himself said that it was intended to keep Muslims out of the country.
The Justice Dept. has defended the ban by saying the president has broad authority to determine whom to let into the country
and whom to bar. The Ninth Circuit Court disagreed, however, and ruled that while the president can ban specific people from
entering the country, he doesn't have the authority to ban entire religions or nationalities.
In effect, the Supreme Court will have to decide precisely how much authority the president has in this area.

The Court has a large number of hot-button cases on its agenda this year, including a case about a baker who doesn't
want to bake cakes for gay weddings, partisan gerrymandering, an Internet sales tax, and sports gambling. (V)

With today marking the one year anniversary of Donald Trump's inauguration,
it's a good time to take stock of how well he is doing.
The Los Angeles Times published a
poll
yesterday that gives a good impression.
To start with, 32% of Americans approve of Trump, 55% disapprove, and 12% are neutral. This is the worst any president has
scored at the one-year point since polling of this sort began after WWII.
Worse yet for him, 42% said they strongly disapprove and only 15% strongly approve.
Trump is also dragging down the Republican party, with 51% preferring a Democrat for the House and 40% preferring a Republican.

Trump's approve/disapprove numbers vary quite a bit by region of the country as follows:
Northeast (27%/59%), Midwest (37%/47%), South (32%/54%), and West (30%/60%).
The breakdown by race is like this: whites (41%/47%), blacks (5%/80%), Latinos (18%/67%), and other (26%/56%).
The one bright spot for Trump is that 49% of whites without a college degree support him while 37% don't.
Whites with a college education are strongly against Trump with only 28% approving and 65% disapproving. (V)

Mitch McConnell has been trying hard to sign up Hillbilly Elegy author
J.D. Vance to run for the Senate against Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) after state
treasurer Josh Mandel dropped out. Yesterday, Vance
announced
that he wouldn't make the run due to family and work obligations. Unless someone
else of note gets in the race quickly, it looks like Donald Trump's preferred
candidate, Rep. Jim Renacci (R-OH), will get the nomination without too much of
a problem.

It is not surprising that Trump backs Renacci, as Renacci has supported Trump
though thick and thin. Most recently, he defended Trump for calling Haiti, El
Salvador, and countries in Africa "shithole countries." Most other Republicans were
aghast when Trump said this. Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) said: "It's a terrible
comment" and Paul Ryan said the remarks were "very unfortunate."

Renacci was originally running for governor, but when Mandel dropped out (due
to his wife's health problems), Renacci decided to run for the Senate instead.
(V)

The federal government put Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) on trial for corruption
last year but the trial resulted in a hung jury. Now the feds want to
try again.
What a difference a year makes, though. If Menendez had been found guilty last
year and forced out of the Senate, then-governor Chris Christie would have
appointed a Republican to replace him, changing the delicate partisan balance of
the Senate. As a consequence, Democrats were quietly rooting for him to be
acquitted, so as not to lose the seat. Now that Gov. Phil Murphy (D-NJ) has been
sworn in, everything changes. If Menendez is found guilty and quits now, the
governor will name a Democrat to the seat, thus keeping the partisan balance the
same. Since Menendez is up for reelection in 2018, probably most Senate
Democrats are quietly hoping that he is found guilty and quits so they will get
a candidate with a lot less baggage in November. (V)

For the past year, Democrats have been praying (to the extent that Democrats
pray) that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg's health holds out for at least
three more years. The health of the other justices wasn't really on the radar
until yesterday, when Sonia Sotomayor was
treated
by emergency medical services. She has had type I diabetes since she was a child
and the medical scare yesterday was due to low blood sugar. She recovered after
being treated and was able to work afterwards.

She controls the disease with a combination of insulin injections, glucose
tablets, and regular checks of her blood sugar. When her new law clerks arrive
each fall, she explains to them how to detect that she has low blood sugar and
how to treat it. (V)

Reaction to the Trump's administration's decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from
Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was overwhelmingly negative. Since this is the kind of thing that can
take a long time to work out, Team Trump could easily have dragged its feet until the whole thing
was forgotten or was some other president's problem. That's not the plan, however, as a decision
has been
made to move into an existing building owned by the U.S. government. That will allow
the relocation to take place sometime in 2019.

Actually, the move would have taken place sometime this year if Donald Trump
had his way. It was Secretary of State Rex Tillerson who insisted on such trivialities
as waiting until a proper security system is installed. It would seem that someone, at least,
has heard of Benghazi. And all of this news adds to the general impression that the
President's primary concern is the (short-term) PR victory he's trying to score with
the base. (Z)

It could be a long time before we fully understand the full extent of Russian meddling
in the election of 2016 (if we ever do). The latest bearer of bad news is Twitter,
which
announced
that it has identified 3,814 accounts that are likely under the control
of the Kremlin-linked troll farm called the Internet Research Agency (IRA).
The press release does not make clear if @realdonaldtrump is one of the 3,814.

The activity of these troll accounts was quite extensive. They produced a staggering
176,000 tweets in the 10 weeks preceding the election, which were then retweeted
endlessly by another 50,258 automated accounts tied to the Russian government. At least
700,000 users interacted with the troll tweets; those folks will be notified by Twitter
this week. Of course, the social media platform has no way of knowing how many millions
of additional users read those tweets without any interaction. And, apparently, no particular
ability to police its users. (Z)